


Twenty Random Facts About Deanna Troi (And Will Riker)

by Leyenn



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn





	Twenty Random Facts About Deanna Troi (And Will Riker)

**1.**

When she was five, Deanna found an antique art pen wrapped up in some thick dusty cloth in the basement of the menservants' quarters. No one's used that part of the house for about a century, but there were some tiny candles and some actual _paper_ that had scribbles on it in a hand that looked just like hers except her mother would never let her play in this much grime. There was a little box with some very old home-made candy in it that she didn't dare eat, as well.

Last time she was home, when her mother was away in the city, she went down into that basement. The little box is glass covered with filigree and threadbare satin, looks like something someone owned for too long and threw away into a little girl's hands to play with. It has six thousand light years on it now, and still counting.

  


**2.**

She always knew she'd be a little different. Lwaxana always told her that she probably wouldn't be able to read minds, but that she should never let that stop her from doing anything that she wanted to do with her life. She neglected to mention, at that time, that what Deanna wanted to do with her life was exactly what Lwaxana wanted her to do with it.

Deanna's always thought it was a little silly the way her mother talked about her lack of telepathy like a handicap when her father's race is completely mind-blind. She didn't realise how much it's rubbed off on her until she had to be Human for a little while. It was an absolute nightmare that she still doesn't like to think about; she doesn't admit that to many of her crewmates, because telling them she would never want to be them in a million years isn't exactly conducive to a friendly relationship.

  


**3.**

Deanna wasn't old enough to _feel_ it when her daddy died, but when her mother took her to see the body, she tried to imagine reaching out and there not being anything there. Then she looked up at her mother and she didn't have to.

Lwaxana had nightmares until Deanna hit puberty. She only shared the very last one: it was black and cold, empty and _gone_, and now when she remembers touching her daddy's hand it feels like all that was there under his skin and it's her own voice she remembers screaming.

  


**4.**

Fear was the first emotion she felt that wasn't hers. She'd walked into a classroom a little ahead of time, not expecting anyone to be there, and come face-to-face with Chandra Xerx sitting at a far desk in the middle of frantically cramming for a protocol class, crying with frustration in the way that confused students and twelve-year-olds do.

Deanna went to her and held her and told her it was all right, that she'd gotten the last exam completely wrong herself anyway and Professor Kilar hadn't been angry for her not understanding. It was a wonderful, powerful feeling to make the world that much better, even for just a moment.

  


**5.**

She set foot on Earth for the first time when she was twenty-four, against her mother's stringent objections about travelling so far from home. Will tried not to be too gleeful that she'd chosen to go: he took her to County Cork, Venice, Istanbul, San Francisco, the Nepalese mountains, Alaska, and called it the 'whistle-stop' tour. They didn't make it to Copernicus City because they were too distracted by each other in the firelight and thick rugs in his cabin. That was when she found out about his father, as well as waking up one night to discover he could play the piano.

  


**6.**

In Deanna's desk drawer is a diary of all the places she's visited over the years. Of course the file is stored on the _Enterprise_ central computer, but there's something comforting about always entering it on the same padd. It's one she's owned since twenty-three sixty-three, a black Betazed-style gift from a University friend on her birthday, and it has a few scrapes and marks where her fingers have always pressed, which feel appropriate for something so personal.

She keeps a scribbled hand-bound book of her favorite places, too. An open-air oceanside theatre on Galastra Four; Beverly dragged her to a midnight performance at the theatre while they were in a nearby system - she didn't really want to go, but the hour's shuttle ride was worth the view. Surprisingly, the Galastran players were convincing even to an empath.

The Sun Cliffs on Betazed's northern continent; her favorite place to visit when she goes home. They're pure crystal, beneath the crystalline sandy soil, hanging high over a shallow bay of the northern ocean, and when she stands on the very edge she can feel the currents of energy run through her skin as the light shatters into rainbows everywhere she looks.

A little private hotel half a mile from Angel Falls, on Earth: it beats the cabin in Alaska only by a few blissful degrees of heat - she could never get used to that much snow - and the sunrise through the window as Will opened his eyes is the most breathtaking thing on the planet.

  


**7.**

The _Enterprise_ is only Deanna's third shipboard assignment. The first was the _USS Hephaestus, NCC-3027_, a compact medical vessel with a crew of four hundred and three, and five counselors. It gave her headaches, that many people in such an enclosed space. She took the second assignment five months later; the _Yorktown_, twice the size and nearly a hundred less people. Of course, one of those was Will for a few months, so the headaches didn't quite go away altogether.

When she took the promotion to the _Enterprise_ it was only because she felt she should since Picard had offered it. She worked out the ratio on people to space and it frightened the hell out of her. She slept with a hypo by the bed until Tasha died, but after that there was a different ache inside. Guilt, she tells herself, and she has the professionalism to admit that it won't quite ever go away.

  


**8.**

The first time Deanna had sex was with Will Riker, approximately (they worked out later) forty kilometers from the nearest other person, not counting those other unfortunate Starfleet Ground Security Officers who had a far less entertaining three-day trek back out of the Jalara Jungle. Coming from a planet where everyone knows everyone else's business, she feels rather privileged about this.

  


**9.**

Deanna is, unbeknownst to most people, extraordinarily wealthy. It's an odd thing to be in this day and age. She doesn't often think about it, except when she's losing drastically at poker and she thinks someone's going to make a joke. Will's probably the only one who knows most of what she has to her name. This is only because she paid for the apartment they used to live in, because he's had the guided tour of her family's (four) houses - including the beachside house at El-Nar that her mother still won't visit - and because there's still a Federation Bank account somewhere with both their names on.

Well, you never know when something like that is going to come in useful, especially when she's losing badly at poker.

  


**10.**

At University, Deanna learnt hypnotism, dream theory and how to play tri-d chess with her empathy as well as her brain, all from the same professor. She was a good enough student that Data is the only one who usually plays her, because he doesn't really read the vibes any better, and she can usually beat him even with one sense tied behind her back.

  


**11.**

There is family on her father's side on Earth, some of whom she still has never met. There are pictures and she knows some of their names, but they've never made the effort to see her since he died. In the two years she studied at the Academy, she did find the time to call her cousin Nickolas for the first time. They still write every so often. She missed his wedding, but sent a gift for the birth of his daughter: he sends her birthday greetings and holographs, but excuses about his parents' reluctance to meet her when she makes it to Earth on leave. To an empath, a psychologist and an alien, the situation is quite plain, but to a half-orphaned half-Human it hurts to think about.

  


**12.**

Deanna never had any intention of marrying Wyatt Miller. Her mother must have known this, even though they never mentioned it and Lwaxana probably didn't care anyway. She still isn't sure why she tried to go through with it, except that Wyatt was a pleasant enough young man and when it came to it she didn't want to disappoint people. (All right, _a_ person.) She resents Lwaxana for that, a little, and then she berates herself for thinking like that when it _was_ done out of love, misguided though it always is. Secretly she thinks Lwaxana enjoyed seeing Will suffer in that quietly helpless way that he did. She hates that she enjoyed it too.... just a little.

She did apologise to him for it afterwards. A few years afterwards.

  


**13.**

She's well aware that she bought her way into her first rank or two - not with her money, but with her choice of career. If she'd stuck with geology she might still be a junior lieutenant in the planetary science labs now. But no, Starfleet needed qualified counselors and Deanna Troi wanted to do something worthwhile, so it's worked out well for both of them in the long run.

  


**14.**

The Goddess of Empathy programme is still hiding in a small area of private, mostly inactive computer memory. Deanna is aware of this, and of who uses it, but she chooses not to notice. Mostly.

  


**15.**

The last (that is, the most recent) time Deanna had sex was with Will Riker, in the turbolift between decks three and four, section sixteen-beta, at just past one in the morning - stardate 50063.3, after last Tuesday's poker game in the Captain's quarters. He was wearing considerably more than the first time, although her dress wasn't quite as conservative, and they'd both had just enough of the 'sixty-nine to make it fun.

(She can't recall why they were going up that many decks. It doesn't matter anyway. They did have to go back down to deck eight, though, when Geordi called to check if the lift needed maintenance to get moving again.)

  


**16.**

Wyatt Miller, Will Riker, and Worf. All three of them have jilted her midway through an engagement; it's ironic that the one that lasted longest is the one she barely knew.

  


**17.**

She's tried not to share her mother's ideas about men, but secretly she envies how Lwaxana can be so carefree with herself. She does wish sometimes she could be that open around her crewmates, around her friends, and not have that put the distance between them she knows it would.

  


**18.**

Even more secretly, she's looking forward to hitting the Phase. When she told Will that he laughed, but there was a slightly wild look in his eyes that made her feel passionate and powerful again, like another new sense, as she shoved him down on the bed.

She thinks they do hide it well, the fact that she owns him, in soul if not in body. (Betazoids aren't _that_ barbaric.) Picard doesn't seem to have noticed and since he sits right between them, that should be a fair indication. One day she'll tell them all and it will be just as much fun as she imagines.

  


**19.**

Deanna has tasted a hundred and forty-seven different types of chocolate. She's eaten it straight from the Galastran cocoa pod-plant, from the most expensive box latinum can buy; liquid and solid and ice, as soufflés and as sundaes, as fondue and gateaux and spread on naked skin. Non-replicated Ktarian mousse is her favorite.

  


**20.**

_Deanna Troi_ is the name listed as next of kin for three people in the Federation Medical Database.

Ian Andrew Troi (Jr.), Deceased.

Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House Of Betazed, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Riix, Heir To The Holy Rings Of Betazed, Ambassador.

William Thomas Riker (I), Commander, Starfleet.

(She had the entry for Tom removed.)

  


*

  



End file.
